{"id":5851,"date":"2021-09-24T22:54:04","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T19:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=5851"},"modified":"2021-09-24T22:59:24","modified_gmt":"2021-09-24T19:59:24","slug":"russia-five-of-jehovahs-witnesses-are-sentenced-to-6-to-6-5-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/russia-five-of-jehovahs-witnesses-are-sentenced-to-6-to-6-5-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia: Five of Jehovah’s Witnesses are sentenced to 6 to 6.5 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

A court in the city of Volgograd in southwestern Russia sentenced Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses to more than 6 years in prison each on extremism charges Thursday, the religious organization said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Traktorozavodsky district court sentenced Valery Rogozin to 6 years and 5 months, Igor Yegozaryan and Sergei Melnik to 6 years, and Denis Peresunko to 6 years and 3 months \u201cfor praying and discussing the Bible with fellow believers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors had asked judge Iryna Struk for 9- and 7-year sentences for the worshippers.<\/p>\n

The latest convictions bring the total number of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses handed prison sentences to 39 since Russia\u2019s Supreme Court declared the Christian denomination extremist in 2017. Another 56 worshippers are currently in prison awaiting sentencing, 31 are under house arrest and a total of 541 have faced persecution, according to the organization\u2019s tally.<\/p>\n

\u201cJehovah’s Witnesses are peaceful, politically neutral people,\u201d said Valery Rogozin, 59, in his last words in court. \u201cWe learned from the Bible that only God can deal with all of humanity’s problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other defendants echoed his statement, with Melnik, 49, saying \u201cI have tried to do good, to show love and justice, to take care of people\u201d and Peresunko, 43, noting \u201cI am being judged because I learned the truth that is in the Bible and discussed it with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole world says that Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot be extremists, that they are pacifists, that they do not take up arms and never speak against the state, they do not interfere in politics,\u201d said Yegozarian, 56.<\/p>\n

Investigators in 2019 upgraded the worshippers\u2019 criminal charges from \u201cparticipating\u201d to \u201corganizing\u201d an extremist community, which allowed for longer prison terms for them.<\/p>\n

Witnesses for the prosecution accused investigators of falsifying their testimony, according to the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir preliminary testimony contained words they had not said. One of them explicitly stated that the investigator had \u2018made up and edited\u2019 her testimony,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses organization added that a witness they said was interrogated incognito accused the believers of \u201cspiritual terrorism,\u201d while another said they had never heard the defendants \u201cthreaten, call for violence or overthrow the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extremist activity includes \u201cpropaganda of the exclusivity, superiority or inferiority of a person on the basis of his social, racial, national, religious or linguistic affiliation or attitude to religion\u201d according to the language in the 2017 Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n

\u201cDozens of ongoing and past trials of believers prove that there is not a single instance of actual harm to the state and society,\u201d the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses said in the statement.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A court in the city of Volgograd in southwestern Russia sentenced Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses to more than 6 years in prison each on extremism charges Thursday, the religious organization said in a statement. The Traktorozavodsky district…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5851"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5856,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5851\/revisions\/5856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}